The only surety we have, then, is this uncertainty about the hour of our death, which we seize on as the excuse to postpone facing death directly. We are like children who cover their eyes in a game of hide and seek and think that no one can see them.
SOGYAL RINPOCHEHow important it is to be skillful and gentle with ourselves, without becoming disheartened or giving up, but trusting the spiritual path and knowing that it has its own laws and its own dynamics.
More Sogyal Rinpoche Quotes
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There would be no chance to get to know death at all …if it happened only once.
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Just because we go through a difficult situation, it doesn’t mean that the future is predetermined. The future is very much in our hands, in our actions.
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For it is only through meditation that you can undertake the journey to discover your true nature, and so find the stability and confidence you will need to live, and die, well; Meditation is the road to enlightenment.
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There is no armor like perseverance.
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We are fragmented into so many different aspects. We don’t know who we really are, or what aspects of ourselves we should identify with or believe in.
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There is no effort, only rich understanding, wakefulness, and unshakable certainty. When I am in the nature of mind, the ordinary mind is no longer there. There is no need to sustain or confirm a sense of being: I simply am.
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Death is like a mirror in which the true meaning of life is reflected.
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Generally we waste our lives, distracted from our true selves, in endless activity. Meditation is the way to bring us back to ourselves, where we can really experience and taste our full being.
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And when you talk about realization, accomplishment for that matter enlightenment is that when you realize the fundamental essence of your mind.
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The whole of our life is a teaching of how to uncover that strong goodness, and a training toward realizing it.
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To be a spiritual warrior means to develop a special kind of courage, one that is innately intelligent, gentle, and fearless.
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All my masters would give this as their advice, for this is the essence of what is needed as you come to die: “Be free of attachment and aversion. Keep your mind pure. And unite your mind with Buddha.”
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Our lives are lived in intense and anxious struggle, in a swirl of speed and aggression, in competing, grasping, possessing and achieving, forever burdening ourselves with extraneous activities and preoccupations.
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Devotion {to the spiritual master} becomes the purest, quickest, and simplest way to realize the nature of our mind and all things.
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This life is the only time and place we can prepare in, and we can only truly prepare through spiritual practice: This is the inescapable message of the natural bardo of this life.
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We start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.
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Our bodies can suddenly break down and go out of order, just like our cars. We can be quite well one day, then fall sick and die the next.
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Samsara is the mind turned outwardly, lost in its projections. Nirvana is the mind turned inwardly, recognizing its true nature.
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True spirituality is to be aware that if we are interdependent with everything and everyone else, even our smallest, least significant thought, word and action have real consequences throughout the universe.
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The purpose of meditation is to awaken in us the sky-like nature of mind, and to introduce us to that which we really are, our unchanging pure awareness, which underlies the whole of life and death
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When you have learned, through discipline, to simplify your life, and so practiced the mindfulness of meditation, and through it loosened the hold of aggression, clinging, and negativity on your whole being, the wisdom of insight can slowly dawn.
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Has my understanding of death and impermanence become so keen and so urgent that I am devoting every second to the pursuit of enlightenment? If you can answer “yes” to both of these, then you really understand impermanence.
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Every time I hear the rush of a mountain stream, or the waves crashing on the shore, or my own heartbeat,
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Once an old woman came to Buddha and asked him how to meditate. He told her to remain aware of every movement of her hands as she drew the water from the well, knowing that if she did, she would soon find herself in that state of alert and spacious calm that is meditation.
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How important it is to be skillful and gentle with ourselves, without becoming disheartened or giving up, but trusting the spiritual path and knowing that it has its own laws and its own dynamics.
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At the moment of death, there are two things that count: whatever we have done in our lives, and what state of mind we are in at that very moment.
SOGYAL RINPOCHE